by Ian Hall
I shook my head. “You’re contradicting yourself. You said I was a vampire, right?”
“Technically, yes, because your blood has been ‘turned’ by the vampire blood.”
“But you also said that you don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“That’s also correct.” He stood up and turned to leave, then stopped at the door. “But you also haven’t had any symptoms of needing to feed yet, so we’re hoping that will continue.”
“So I just stay in limbo?”
He ignored me. “Get better, Lyman.” And he walked off down the corridor. He had copped out, and I resented him for it.
Despite my feeling ‘good’, I soon tired and fell asleep again. The silent Fox News on the Television in the corner proved the only indication of the passing of time.
That and the meager meals.
I had lunch later, then the doc came around to check on me.
“When do I get out?” I asked as he looked at the charts on the end of the bed.
“When you’re stronger. Maybe a week or so. Maybe two.”
“I feel pretty good right now.”
He looked me in the eye with such gravity that I flinched. “I don’t give a damn if you think you can run a marathon. You may think you’re strong, Lyman, but I’m telling you that you won’t walk twenty feet before falling down, and if you do strain any of the stitches inside your belly holding your innards together, you’ll bleed to death inside before we can say Jack Robinson.”
When the nurse took my temperature the next day, I thought I’d try again. “When can I get out of bed, get these tubes out of my arms?”
“You’ll have to ask the doctor.” Her retreating voice echoed down the corridor.
Hospitals are great places; you arrive busted, and they usually put you back together again and send you on your way. But the ‘in between’ time is the bad time. For some, just a couple of days. For me, it was going to be a couple of weeks.
Frustrating as hell.
My parents were dead, I had missed the funeral, and now I had to sort out the rest.
I felt determined not to give in to the boredom of hospital life. If they needed me to lie still for a couple of weeks, I would do just that.
I lay with my hand on my belly, wondering just how many stitches were in there.
I worked fast. After whisking Jackson Cole’s body back to his house, I returned to the Bracks’ and quietly got into Jackson’s car. I’d beat the ambulance and police, but I could see Mary-Christine inside, being hugged by her mom. I drove back to Jackson’s and parked it in the drive. So far I’d erased all evidence of our involvement, and it had taken me less than twenty minutes.
I zipped back to Lyman’s in time to see them take him away; blue and red lights everywhere. I counted seven police cars parked outside the house; I didn’t even know Gregor had so many.
I followed the ambulance to the hospital in Flagstaff; well, technically, the ambulance followed me. I beat it by a good two minutes.
I waited right outside the emergency entrance and watched Lyman being wheeled in with medics pounding on his chest and yelling out terms I couldn’t understand to the medical people running out to meet them. It was freaking mayhem and nobody noticed the vampire hanging out by the sliding glass doors.
Mary-Christine and her parents went in behind them.
When I went to follow them all inside, the doors slipped open for me, but in front of me stood that no-vampires-allowed, invisible barrier that I couldn’t cross. But, I found a way. Around the north side there was a regular door that had to be pulled open. I just waited it out until some nice old man came around, opened the door and said, “After you.” As far as invitations go, I didn’t care as long as it worked.
Then it was just a matter of stalking the Muscats until Mary-Christine noticed me. I motioned her over with a little jerk of my head. The little twerp thought she could ignore me; a flash of my fangs cured her of that.
We met up in the ladies room. One of those fancy bathrooms that’s trying to be something you’d find in a classy restaurant instead of a hospital. Mary-Christine went up to the sink and started splashing water on her face. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying; she looked more like an old woman than a teenage girl.
I kind of felt sorry for her; that is - until she opened her snide little mouth.
“What do you want from me, Mandy?” she asked, dabbing her cheeks with a paper towel. “You want me to thank you or something? Fine. Whatever - thank you. Now just leave us alone…we’ve been through enough because of your kind.”
Why that little, ungrateful bitch…
In one lightning-fast move, I had her pinned up against the wall. The smell of that Helsing blood burned my eyes and nostrils, like I’d been chopping onions or something. But, I didn’t care. I had her scared and that’s exactly where I wanted her.
“My kind? My kind saved your ass, little girl. My ‘kind’ actually killed four of their own ‘kind’ tonight, and I’m not going to let you forget that. And if your boyfriend lives, I’ll be there to make sure he knows all about it.”
Her reaction was surprising, to say the least. I mean, if I’d been in her place, I’d have been begging for my life. Not Mary-Christine. The chick was some Judo black belt or something. She swiped her leg under mine and next thing I knew, despite my vampire awesomeness, I sat on my butt on the cold tile floor.
“You listen to me, Mandy Cross…you have my word on this…when Lyman wakes up - IF he does - I will tell him what you did for us.” She squatted down next to me, hatred in her puffed-up eyes. “But don’t you think for a second that you’re some kind of big hero. If Lyman’s been changed…he’s as good as dead anyway.”
Mary-Christine crumpled into a little ball then. She seemed so small, so fragile. Not like a chick that could’ve just sucker-kicked a vampire.
I guess I hadn’t figured that the Helsings would actually turn on one of their own. Then again, if Lyman Bracks woke up a vampire - then he wouldn’t be one of theirs anymore. He’d be one of mine.
An interesting thought.
“I’m not going to let that happen,” I said, becoming weirdly maternal all of the sudden. I think I even patted her head. “After what Jackson did to keep Lyman alive, I’m sure as hell not gonna let your dad - or any-freaking-body else kill him.”
“You can’t stop it. If they find you, they’ll kill you, too. These are the goddamn Helsings, Mandy. No mercy will be shown.”
“I don’t need their mercy…and they won’t get mine if they try.”
She started to get a little frantic again. “What’re you saying? Now I have to choose between Lyman and my family?”
“Hell no,” I said, grabbing her head and forcing her to look into my eyes. “I’ve already made that choice for you. Like it or not, Mary-Christine, you and me are on the same side here.”
Recovery and Confrontation
I put my rehabilitation plan into action when Mary-Christine came in for evening visiting. “I’ve kinda permanently borrowed your new car,” she said after the perfunctory kiss. “Hope you don’t mind.”
“No, not at all. It just makes it easier to ask my favors.”
“Oh, yes?” she leant towards me and gave me a more impassioned kiss, the type with twisting tongues and airy gasps at the end. The first time she’d done that since I’d woken up. It felt long overdue.
“I need my laptop, some kind of Internet hotspot, and a few games from home.” I looked her in the eye. “I need to get myself well again, and get back to Helsing-ing.”
She gave me a forlorn look.
“Don’t start that on me!” I snapped.
“What?”
“The pity party.” I felt determined not to go down without a fight. “Listen, Mary-Christine. If I had cancer, you’d be a bit bent out of shape about it, but you’d be encouraging me not to give up. You’d be giving me statistics of survivors, for goodness sake.”
She shook her head, and the te
ars formed in her eyes. “That’s just the point, Lyman. We know what’s happened. You’ve been kept alive, fixed, with vampire blood, so we know you’re turned.”
“We don’t know squat!” I shouted. Then I suddenly remembered where we were, and the subject matter. I lowered my voice considerably. “Your dad said the vampire blood is there, but it hasn’t turned me yet. There’s no mention of feeding, no feeling of bloodlust. Maybe I can beat this thing. You know, be the first vampire cancer survivor. Someone has to be first.”
She laid her head on my chest, but her body shook rhythmically, I knew she still sobbed.
I got the laptop the next morning, delivered by a very perky Mary-Christine, on her way to school. The world had changed, lying on my bed, I would either be gaming or researching. I determined not to be bored.
I had just got onto the hospital Internet, when a man in a suit knocked on the doorframe.
“Detective Calhoun,” he said, flashing a small card. “Flagstaff P.D. Can I come in?”
“Sure.” As he sat, I turned Dave’s story over in my head.
Five drunk kids from school, they argued amongst themselves, two ran away.
He sat in the chair and looked all around the room. I knew that his eyes didn’t miss a thing. This guy just oozed ‘smart-as-a-tack.’
“Lyman Bracks, right?” his eyes came back to mine.
“That’s me.”
“I’d just like to say before I start, I’m sorry about your folks. I attended the scene that night, after they’d taken you away. You left quite a mess.”
“Sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“So I’ll get to the point, let you get back to your laptop. What do you remember of that night?”
I took a deep breath. It wasn’t that I hadn’t gone over the thing in my mind; I now had to censor the events for official channels. “Not much, really. It’s all kinda hazy, and it seemed to be over pretty quickly. I mean, we had just come back from Atlanta, I’d gotten a new car from my girlfriend’s father. We were on a high.”
“New car?”
“Yeah, the last one got wrecked.”
“And this new car came from?”
“Dave Muscat got it for me; my girlfriend’s dad.”
Calhoun wrote it all down, then nodded. “So you got inside the house?”
“Yeah, a bunch of jocks from the Academy were there, trashing the place, drinking. They’d tied mom and dad up. We weren’t ready for anything. They got us tied up, too.”
“Names? Did you recognize them?”
“Sure, I’d gotten into a bit of a fight with them at school. Nothing much.”
“Names?”
“Sharon Jones, Jeff Fielding, Billy Tankard, Elizabeth Wanrowski, and Jahred Sykes.”
“And what happened then?”
“They started arguing amongst themselves.”
“Who started it?”
“I don’t really know.”
The detective looked at me. I knew this was a question that I had to hit just right – out-of-the-park good. “Who died first?”
“Dad,” I said, my gaze unflinching. I gave a shudder. “Then mom.”
“And at this point you were tied up?”
“Hell yeah!” I boiled over. “Do you think I would have just stood and done nothing?”
Calhoun held his hands up. I got myself quickly under control again.
“Now, son, I know this is difficult.”
I steeled myself again.
“We know your mom got, eh, sexually assaulted.”
“Jeff did it.”
“Jeff Fielding?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The one you killed with the chair.”
I gulped. “Yes.”
He gave me a hard stare. “Now we only found two other bodies there.”
“Yeah,” I said, my face grimacing in memory. “By then I’d been stabbed by the spear. Two of them went berserk; I mean who tears people’s heads off!”
“So you’re saying that the other two left the building?”
“If they weren’t in the house, they must have left.” It may have seemed impudent, but they were the facts as I saw them.
Calhoun stood up slowly, clicked his pen, and placed it carefully in his jacket pocket. His eyes never left mine. “Don’t go leaving town, son.”
Mary-Christine and I parted ways in the ladies’ room. She sulked off to mommy and daddy, leaving me with one job to do.
I wasn’t about to leave Jackson to the hands of some coroner; sure as hell not to the effing Helsings. Those people are just plain nuts. Jackson Cole had died, and it was my job to put his body to rest somewhere nice. Considering all he’d done for me, no way I’d let my foster brother down.
So, I scoured the Cole house, looking for anything personal or religious I could find. I even considered burying him with his guitar, but dismissed that. Carrying Jackson would be bad enough. Mona and Steve must have been pretty religious, same as Jackson, ‘cause there were crosses hung in like, every room. Found a rosary and a Bible, too. I gathered these things, along with Jackson’s body, and headed up for the prettiest place I could think of: the White Mountains.
Grave digging wasn’t something I ever figured I need to learn how to do. Suffice to say, the actual hole looked shallow and misshapen at best. But, I’d found a plot overlooking a sprawling meadow; once the snow melted in Spring, my Jackson would have quite a view.
I didn’t know my way around the scriptures and so I didn’t really bother with that. I put the rosary around Jackson’s neck and laid him to rest, hugging the Bible to his chest. Seemed to me that’s how he would’ve wanted it.
Then I patted the earth flat as I could get it and marked his grave with this really antique-looking crucifix. Proof positive, BTW, that crosses don’t harm vampires. Inside I really hoped that this one - the one I laid over Jackson’s grave - would save him.
I got three large boulders, and put them on top of the earth, just to keep animals out. “Might be able to find you again, bro.”
Last thing, I recited the only prayer I remembered from childhood. My mom used to say it with me every night at bedtime:
“Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord
My soul to keep
If I should die
Before I wake
I pray the Lord
My soul to take.”
By the time I finished, the sun had started to come up. The prettiest sunrise I’d seen in a long time. Tears crept into my eyes, but I remembered his saying, and sucked them back inside.
“One ghost put to rest,” I said to the dirt covering my foster brother. “So many more to go, though.”
I waited there until it got dark again and went back to Lyman Bracks’s. Yellow “crime scene” tape strung all over the place, including over the front door. No problemo - I scurried up to the attic window and burgled my way inside.
All the bodies were gone; chalk outlines were all that remained of them. That is, besides bloodstains all over the freaking place. I smiled at that. The police would never even know Jackson Cole had been part of this. The Helsings would never know what had become of his body. He was totally safe; totally at rest.
So, I figured it was time for me to rest, too. I made up a little nest in the attic, complete with cot and blankets, and hunkered down. There I waited for any word on the Helsing, Lyman Bracks.
A few days into my vigil, I heard - and smelled - humans crashing around downstairs. With my super vampire hearing, I didn’t have to sneak around to eavesdrop. I just pressed my ear to the floorboards and listened.
I’m guessing the first voice I heard was a cop. I dunno; his voice just sounded all arrogant and superior that way - y’ know… like a P.E. teacher.
“Alright,” he said, all authoritative, “let’s see if we can piece this thing together…”
Another voice, more mousy, came through the floor. “Okay…dad was found, strapped to a chair, exposed, in this ar
ea. Semen found on his body and clothing, indicated sexual activity just prior to death. Coroner’s report determined that he had intercourse with one of the females found at the scene.”
Ewe. Gross! But, I wouldn’t put it past those Blanche vampires; Alan’s favorite weapon against me had been sex. Not that we ever did it; the pussy.
Mousy voice continued, “Mom, on the other hand, we found clear over in that area. Initial examination indicates sexually assault…or, rather, engagement…just before time of death as well; we’ll know more after the autopsy. I’m guessing the semen specimen won’t match the husband’s. Probably the guy with the chair leg through the heart.”
“Interesting,” the P.E. teacher said. “So…son walks in on mom and dad involved in some weird swap fest with a bunch of teenagers, goes nuts, kills everybody…”
OMG! Where did that cop get this stuff from? Lyman had been tied to a chair, for fuck’s sake.
Luckily, his phone rang before he could finish painting his nasty picture.
“Calhoun here.”
I made a mental note to make Officer Calhoun my next meal…
“Copy that. I’m on my way.”
That’s when Calhoun made the announcement I’d been waiting for.
“Kid’s awake, in good enough shape to talk to. I’m headed for General.”
After a few days of overkill medical supervision, the good doc finally started coming around - seeing things my way.
“You’re eating by yourself now, I’m sure we can arrange the removal of tubes, but your liquid intake will be religiously monitored for a day or so.”
“That’s fine, Doc. I’ll be as good as gold. I want to go home.”
He looked at me real serious. “You have to remember, your insides will still be very fragile; you had some nasty lacerations in there.”
So I had a lot to think about. In all probably, I manifested signs of being a vampire, but so far the feeding thing had remained latent, so that seemed to be a bonus. I had no real reason to doubt Unicorps’s blood tests; I mean, they had detected the Helsing gene in the first place. I had to assume they knew what they were doing.